A Psycho-geography of BKK1, Phnom Penh

Three kings and one dictator watch BKK1, Phnom Penh’s exclusive district. To the north, lies the late king Sihanouk with his effigy is rendered in concrete on a road island. The southern border is held in place by Sihanouk’s allay, Mao Tse Tsung. Sihanouk’s father Monivong keeps the West and in the East lays his grandfather, Norodom.

Google Maps will show you that BKK1 is a rectangular shape roughly one by two kilometers in size. A few locations jump out like pimples. A hotel called Goldiana recalls the Christmas story: was it a gift from the three kings? The Embassy of Malta caters for the single Maltese couple who live in Phnom Penh. They’re probably wanted by the Knights of Malta for espionage in Prague so they won’t be knocking on those doors any time soon.

There are tourists but they are outnumbered by the driftwood of the West. Aging men with blurry tattoos run from tragedy into the arms of cheap whores. Young men totter topless in the guesthouse morning, yawning and pale from nights of cheap booze and methamphetamine. Misfit women come in groups but stay alone; they have maids and massages and men with emotional problems. Families live in air-conditioned castles and have drivers to deliver their children to school. The children are blonde Caspers or from one of China’s successful offshoots: Singapore and Hong Kong.

BKK1 residents take Sihanouk Boulevard to access the restaurants of Riverside. Their Tuk Tuks waft Boss and Chanel down the dust polluted road. Let’s start there with Sihanouk behind us and walk down street 51.

To the left, Wat Langka’s stone gate rises 15 feet high gnarled with carved lotus flowers; either side there are newspaper stands and food vendors collected like coloured paper in the gutter.

Inside, trees keep the shade for monks and dogs to walk along esoteric alleyways. The inner sanctuary is surrounded by spirit houses where the ghosts of monks go to evaporate in the fully-fledged sun. Inside the sanctuary is an enormous statue of the Buddha cross-legged with one hand raised and his thumb connecting with the first of his four fingers symbolising the first of the four noble truths. The venerable Yos Hut Khemacaro moves silently around equally-spaced meditation cushions – each mediator is an island of Dharma – he seems translucent and blends into the background.

Opposite Wat Langka is road 278 that runs the kilometer or so to Monivong Boulevard. At the mouth of the road, four or five restaurants are stuck like dry saliva in the morning. About halfway down 278 is a bar called Equinox whose name invokes the perfectly equal division of day and night; the word coming from the Latin, aequus (equal) and nox (night). It is located equidistant between the sleeping kings Norodom and Monivong and divides the spoils of BKK1 between them.

Tuk Tuks and motorbike drivers on street 278 and sleep on their vehicles at night; their threadbare clothes hanging from smooth brown skin. Day and night they ply their trade calling and waving at tourists and residents: “tuk tuk!”, “moto!” Their calls agitate the ghosts of slave-owners who drift through the deep hells of the collective subconscious; their disturbance ripples into consciousness making the residents of BKK1 shake their heads and avert their eyes and when they do buy a ride from a Tuk Tuk or a motorbike they always pay a little extra.

We walk past Street 278 along street 51. It’s a street split along Freudian lines. The bestial urges contained in the Id of its first half that begins near central market, the frontal cortex of Phnom Penh, and runs a 2km gauntlet of hedonism glowing red with clubs and brothels; the tarmac is a confetti of condoms and vomit.

Be careful not to be shipwrecked here in the nether regions of consciousness. Street 51 is divided by Sihanouk who takes the role of superego, managing the Id’s traffic to ensure too much doesn’t bleed into the respectable ego of BKK1.

Moving along the respectable half of street 51, we come to Policeman’s Corner where four cops sweat in polyester uniforms and languish walrus-like under the shade of an umbrella that advertises Cambodia Beer. In Phnom Penh, some police have to buy their own motorbikes and so their bikes are of the kind you can buy anywhere except stickers reading “Police” are tacked on at strategic points. Opposite them is a gym called The Place where the old religious trades take their current form. People go there to make offerings of sweat and money to the gods of fertility and health represented by the latest celebrity to come out of Hollywood.

Continuing along street 51 and we come to the flagship Costa Coffee store. In naval terms, a flagship is the leader of the fleet and is the fastest most heavily armed vessel. The Ancient Greeks liked to carve figureheads on the front of their ships, often boars’ heads to symbolise acute vision and ferocity while the Romans mounted carvings of warriors to represent valour in battle. A 5-foot coffee cup stands outside Costa Coffee symbolising the bean’s ability to keep you glued to your Mac book those few extra hours a day.

Passing Costa we come to Brown’s Coffee then True Coffee and Gloria Jean’s Coffee. In BKK1, coffee is stamped and sold on corners like Heroin in Baltimore ghettos. There in an imaginary sign hanging in the window of Brown’s: “we got that WMD shit up in here” it says quoting HBO’s, The Wire.

Take a right down one of the roads that runs parallel with Mao Tse Tsung Boulevard and walk towards Monivong. Most houses and apartment blocks have men stationed outside. They wear uncomfortable uniforms supposed to represent the kind of authority that may rein fierce consequences on captured thieves. They sweat under dark caps, their pockets stuffed with tips.

Past a French-run restaurant, one of the last vestiges of the French Indochina romanticised by Swain and Greene before War destroyed it all and the English speaking victors, as part of a worldwide program of indoctrination, strong-armed cultures into giving up their metaphors and sublime experience in exchange for the harsh brilliance of modern science providing them with medicine, engines and skyscrapers.

Now more and more people are buying into it, the reality-altering complex coming from the West is incredibly efficient. Every country now has its version of the X-Factor, a program which harnesses the power of a million critical eyes in order to deal a fatal blow to the natural impulses of song and its power to move and heal the human heart.

Past the French bar and the afternoon sun turns the road sepia-tinted like photos of the Wild West. Motorbikes pass like horses. Street vendors languish in the sun. Worries evaporate like dirty puddles. Ahead is a petrol station, Monivong’s sentinel, watching over the residents of BKK1.

Past the lover’s house, the one who works for an NGO, the balcony is just visible over the gates with tall palms either side like asterisks denoting a *correction*. What correction could be made here? NGO workers find their impulse for justice caught and squeezed by the cogs of a system designed for selfish ends. In the end it gets too much and they lie, like she did, in the sun-soaked afternoon overcome by depression and office infighting.

The impulse for justice, The New York Times reported last year, has been found by scientists to exist in pre-linguistic children of 18 months. This gives weight to Kant’s argument that our urge to good is apriori, that it is built into the fabric of our humanity independent of experience. Therefore the action of helping should be freed from the responsibilities of beurocracy and allowed to take flower like smoke in the vacume of the moment.

Nearing Monivong on the edge of BKK1. Between houses and embassies, small dreams pop up: boutiques, guest houses, coffee shacks and food stools. “Kjnom jong bi saik ch’roo”. Street food is fast and the shade is cool. Rice darkens with soy sauce. Tanks of luxury scatter motos, their bonnets twinkling in the sun.

Scrape the last of the rice from the plastic plate on the edge of BKK1. Walk on to Monivong Boulevard. The old king laid to rest from one end of the city to the other, leaving BKK1 as the sun sets, its residents dreaming, drinking and casting shadows under a cocktail pink sky.

Dr Ramsey Niblick